


are there ghosts in the sendai city gymnasium bathroom?

by glueskin



Category: Haikyuu!!, 四ッ谷先輩の怪談。 | Kiben Gakuha Yotsuya Senpai no Kaidan. (Manga)
Genre: Gen, Hinata Shouyou's Scariest Bathroom Encounter To Date, Murder Is Referenced, friendly teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21598756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glueskin/pseuds/glueskin
Summary: hinata shouyou has an unexpected encounter in the gym before karasuno's match against wakutani.
Relationships: Nakashima Makoto/Hinano Yayoi - mentioned
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	are there ghosts in the sendai city gymnasium bathroom?

**Author's Note:**

> when this arc first happened years ago i was like man i want to write about hinata meeting yotsuya but i never did...i was SO sad when furudate didnt include him when i saw makoto and her family but thats the way the cookie crumbles. i recently binge reread/caught up to hq and when reading this arc again i once more was like wow...what if he met yotsuya haha...
> 
> so i. did it.
> 
> note: the 'referenced murder' is a case that happens in kiben gakuha. its vaguely described but no overly gruesome details are brought up.
> 
> also, i havent written anything hq related since....late 2014-early 2015, so this was kind of fun. i banged it out only in a few hours while doing other stuff, so i apologize for any mistakes.

“I have to pee,” Hinata says, swaying where he stands in one of the halls of Sendai cities largest gym.  
  
“So go pee,” Kageyama says, unscrewing the cap of his water bottle.  
  
“We have about half an hour, so there’s no rush. Just get back in time for warm ups,” Daichi says, patting Hinata’s shoulder.  
  
“Don’t puke again,” Tanaka says. Hinata reddens.  
  
“I _won’t_ , I’m fine, I’m not nervous at all!” He says, far louder than he should be indoors. “Bye!”  
  
He speedwalks away before he can be reminded further of his shame. He still hears Tsukishima’s snickering, though, and it makes him gnash his teeth together as he ducks around taller students and spectators to find the bathroom.  
  
“Did you see that guy in the east hall?” A girl is saying as he passes by and his steps falter; that’s where he’s going. “He was so lanky...and really scary. I couldn’t really see his face, but he was so pale…”  
  
“He looked like a ghost. I couldn’t recognize his uniform, either…” the girl she’s talking to says. Hinata shivers at the thought as he hurries along. Hopefully that guy is already long gone.  
  
His shoes squeak against the recently cleaned linoleum flooring as he sharply turns into the corridor where the bathrooms are. He narrowly avoids walking into by a short haired girl standing at the corner.  
  
“Uwah! Sorry, sorry!” She says when he stumbles around her. She’s wearing a varsity jacket, the number _13_ slightly visible on the uniform she wears beneath it. Maybe she’s here for the girls tournament?  
  
“Don’t mind! I was rushing, my bad,” Hinata says, bowing his head.  
  
“I shouldn’t have been waiting so close to the edge. I’m glad we didn’t knock into each other,” the girl says, clapping a hand over her heart with exaggerated relief as she moves slightly further away. “You’re...Karasuno, right?” She asks, glancing at his uniform.  
  
Hinata flushes hotly. Is his time finally here?! Is he already getting famous enough for cute girls to know who he is!?  
  
“Yes! I’m Hinata, from Karasuno’s team. Are you here for the girls competition?” He asks. She laughs, waving her hand.  
  
“No, no. I’m in soccer. My girlfriend will be competing though, and my brother, so I’m here to cheer them on.”  
  
“Ah, is that right? I wish them good luck, then!”  
  
The girl smiles.  
  
“Good luck to you too, Hinata.”  
  
It’s a shot through the heart. Face red, he bows to her in apology again before all but fleeing from the radiance of her expression. Hinata is _so_ glad Tsukishima isn’t here; if he’d witnessed that he’d laugh himself to tears.  
  
He can’t help it, though. Being wished good luck by a cute girl…! Who wouldn’t get embarrassed?!  
  
Well, maybe Kageyama wouldn’t. Not even Kiyoko really manages to K.O him the way she does the rest of them, though he does get a bit more excited when she wishes them luck.  
  
He almost runs face first into the bathroom door. He nudges it open, pulse still racing and palms oddly clammy.  
  
The lights flicker, briefly dizzying him when he looks up. That’s weird. They were fine yesterday.  
  
A scraping noise reaches Hinata’s ears. He stills, staring at the wall in front of him, the lights flickering ahead and making him feel faint.  
  
It’s nothing. It’s totally nothing, he tells himself as he peers around and into the bathroom properly.  
  
Nobody is there.  
  
He’s about to sigh with relief and step in when he hears a faint voice.  
  
“...know…here...more...Kokkuri-san.”  
  
Hinata squeaks, clapping a hand over his mouth. Kokkuri-san!? Here?! He's too young to die!  
  
A shuffling noise. The drawn out squeal of a poorly oiled hinge. Hinata stares, wide eyed, as the furthest stall door opens slowly.  
  
Someone steps out, their posture slouched, the lights flickering overhead with a strange buzz. When they lift their head to look at Hinata, their eyes are strangely bright, teeth gleaming white in their open mouth.  
  
“Gh-Gh-Gh,” Hinata tries to scream _ghost_ , but his voice breaks and he claps a hand over his eyes and tries to shrink.  
  
The ghost laughs, but it sounds like a raspy cackle.  
  
“That’s right! That’s just right! Such a delightful scream!” It says, and Hinata whimpers.  
  
“I’m not tasty! I promise I’m not tasty at all! Please don’t eat me!” He shrills, and the ghost laughs louder and harder. Hinata peeks through his fingers; the flickering of the lights have settled, apparently deciding they’re not quite dead yet, and the ghost is…  
  
A man, tall even with his odd slouch, and though he’s deathly pale like some sort of corpse the effort of his laughter has added a healthy flush to his face.  
  
Hinata lowers his hands slowly.  
  
“Oh,” he says, and the man cackles.  
  
“Oh, the little boy says! Ahh, that was a wonderfully delicious scream you gave me,” he says, leering, and Hinata’s skin crawls unpleasantly at the strangely hypnotic tone the ghost—man—has.  
  
“Stop traumatizing the children,” someone else says. Hinata reels at the sight of another man exiting the stall the ghostly one had come from.  
  
Wait...wait a second…  
  
“That’s hilarious coming from you, you damn fox,” the ghost man says, his voice going flat and irritable. The other man—pale haired and thin-eyed, with a fixed smile that does indeed make him look like a fox—laughs.  
  
“Is your little assistant not waiting for you? You should get going before she worries too much. I need to return to my team, as well.”  
  
“I seriously pity those children,” the ghost man mutters, slouching further. The fox man smiles wider, walking past Hinata with scarcely a glance down at him as he pushes open the door.  
  
Hinata remains still, red faced and wishing he could die.  
  
“I, I,” he tries to say, and the ghost man fixes his dead looking eyes on him.  
  
“You, you?” He mocks, and Hinata bows so low and frantic his head almost hits the floor.  
  
“I’m so sorry for interrupting!”  
  
Silence greets his apology. He glances up through the length of his fringe and the ghost man is looking...horrified.  
  
“You thought...No! Ew, no!” He claps both his hands on Hinata’s shoulders, shaking him slightly. “Never, you hear me? Not in a million years! It doesn’t matter how handsome he is, I’d rather die! He’s ugly to the core! A rotten fox!”  
  
“Sorry! Sorry!” Hinata says, teeth clacking together as his vision blurs from the force he’s being shaken with. The man stops, so red in the face that he looks almost feverish.  
  
He lets Hinata go, covering his own face with his long-fingered hands.  
  
“I can’t believe anyone...would think…Ugh. Forget it,” he mutters, dropping his hands. He moves like he’s about to leave, but then he glances down at Hinata and his gaze slides past his face and towards his uniform.  
  
“Karasuno?” He asks, curious. Hinata’s head swells at the recognition—that’s two times! In one day!  
  
“Yes, that’s right,” he says proudly. The man rubs at his chin thoughtfully.  
  
“Huh. Guess I’ll be seeing you play soon,” he says, almost to himself, and Hinata’s eyes shine.  
  
“Really? Do you know someone on the team?” He asks and gets a headshake.  
  
“Just you, kid,” he says. “I’m here for a fr...fr…” he looks pained trying to say the word, so he switches tracks. “I’m watching the Wakunan team. With someone else.”  
  
“Ohhh,” Hinata says, rocking back on his heels. “Well, I hope you’re ready to get blown away! Karasuno is super strong now, you know!” He says. He gets ready for a comment on his height, ready to leap up as high as he can to validate his position on the team, but—  
  
He gets a smile instead, unsettling and with a hint of teeth.  
  
“After a declaration like that,” he says, “I hope you don’t disappoint me, little crow.”  
  
Hinata stares, dazed, as the ghost man leaves. The door swings shut behind him with a thud.  
  
His phone hums violently in his shorts. As soon as he sees the notif and the cut-off text from Yachi asking where he is, he realizes it’s already been twenty minutes and he almost pees himself right there.  
  
He replies quickly with an _omw back sorry_ and then takes care of his bladder and washes his hands thoroughly, mind still stuck on the ghost man. For some reason, the incredibly blasé reaction to his words is…  
  
Everyone always looks at him doubtfully and says _with that height? Are you even on the starting line up?_  
  
That always gets him heated. Excited to prove them all wrong. Even if it’s frustrating, it helps him, too.  
  
But somehow, that response has left him feeling just as heated.  
  
He hurries back to the rest of his team after drying his hands; the girl from earlier is gone when he passes by the spot he’d seen her, which is slightly disappointing. He makes it to the gym with only a few minutes left for warm up.  
  
“Did you have to shit or something? Take care of that before we leave,” Tanaka says when Hinata pops up between him and Nishinoya to start stretching.  
  
“I didn’t have to poop! There was just a weird guy, uh…” his face goes red as he remembers his embarrassing scream and the fact he’d thought he had interrupted a private moment. He leans down to touch at his toes to hide his expression.  
  
“What, was he cute? Were you checking him out or something?” Nishinoya asks, eyes gleaming when Hinata raises his head again.  
  
“Don’t date anyone from a rival school,” Kageyama says.  
  
“No! He was like, old! I mean, he was kinda cute,” Hinata admits. In like, a really weird creepy way. When he smiled before he left it was kinda nice. “Anyway, he just, um, the lights weren’t working well and he looked kinda like a ghost, so I got freaked out and he laughed at me.”  
  
He says it despite how embarrassing it is to remember, if only so they won’t tease him about the _he was kinda cute_ thing.  
  
“Oh? So he’s here to watch the matches? Maybe you’ll get to show off,” Tanaka says, nudging Hinata’s side with his elbow, grinning.  
  
“Ew! I said he’s old! Like, college or something. But!” Hinata exclaims, thumping his fist into his palm, “He said he’s here to watch Wakunan with a friend, so he _will_ be watching!”  
  
“Hinata wants to show off for someone from Wakunan?” Sugawara asks, appearing from thin air. Oh god.  
  
“Not quite,” Nishinoya says. “But some weird guy he met when he went to poop—”  
  
“I didn’t poop!”  
  
“—is here to watch Wakunan, so he’s all fired up.”  
  
“A weird guy?” Yamaguchi asks. When did he stop tossing with Tsukishima and approach them!? Hinata’s teammates are turning into ninjas. “Like, that guy?” He points somewhere behind them towards the stands; Hinata turns.  
  
There he is in the stands, alright. He’s standing a few feet away from the Nakashima family, all here to root for who Hinata recalls is the Wakunan captain.  
  
Surrounded by the bright, lively colors of other spectators, he looks like a ghost even now. He’s slouched in on himself, flipping through a worn-out looking book.  
  
Unexpectedly, the girl Hinata had seen in the hallway is there too—and she’s with the Nakashima’s. She must be the captains sister, he thinks, and—  
  
Even more unexpectedly, she shifts away from her family to grab at the ghost man’s arm, tugging him closer to them. She gets a grimace for her efforts, but the ghost man lets himself be pulled along. Over the din of conversation from other spectators and the squeaking of shoes on the court, he thinks he hears her call him _Yotsuya-senpai_.  
  
“That’s him,” Hinata finally says, looking back towards his teammates.  
  
Sugawara’s gaze drifts between the ghost man, Hinata, and then strangely towards Kageyama who had gone back to tossing at Daichi.  
  
“Your taste can be, hm…” he starts to say, then stops and shakes his head and claps Hinata on the back. “Finish your warm ups! We don’t want you pulling a muscle when you do your insane jumps!”  
  
“Guh!!!” That would be bad. Hinata drops down onto his butt, the cold of the floor seeping into his skin through his shorts, and Sugawara hold his shoulders while he bends forward.  
  
He isn’t sure what Sugawara meant by the comment about his taste, but it fades from his mind soon enough. After stretches, Kageyama gives him a few practice tosses, and then all he can think about is how good it feels to leap up and smack the ball down.  
  
The match begins before long. Hinata forgets about everything—the ghost man, the fox man, Sugawara’s comment—and becomes focused only on the goal of victory.

* * *

They win.  
  
Of course they win. Hinata feels a bit like he lost overall, though, in his silent competition with Nakashima Takeru. Even though he doesn’t face him in the line up, he still bows to him after, and Nakashima smiles and claps Hinata’s hands in both of his.  
  
“Win it all,” he says before he lets go.  
  
“We will,” Hinata says to his back when he turns. “Just watch! We definitely will!”  
  
Unbidden, his gaze drifts towards where Nakashima’s family is in the stands. Most of them are moving to leave already, but the girl from earlier and the ghost man are still in place; Nakashima has an arm looped through the ghost man’s. She barely reaches his shoulder.  
  
They’re talking, heads close together, and then he raises his head and catches Hinata’s gaze. He smiles again, like had earlier, and something about his expression seems satisfied.  
  
Hinata grins at him. Nakashima looks at him too, seeming surprised, and then at the ghost man. Hinata gives a bow before turning to the rest of his team, who look lost.  
  
“You know those two, Hinata?” Asahi asks, glancing past him. “That guy...looks kinda scary, huh…”  
  
“Isn’t that Yotsuya-senpai?” Ennoshita says, looking up as he wipes sweat from his face with his towel. They all turn to him, Hinata practically teleporting the few feet of distance between them in order to get close.  
  
“You _know_ him?” He asks, wide eyed, and Ennoshita takes a step back.  
  
“Uh, maybe? It might not be him…” he trails off, glancing back. “I only saw him once, after all.”  
  
Sugawara claps his hands together twice.  
  
“Okay, enough of that. We can talk about it after we’re off the court, okay?”  
  
Oh, right. After apologizing profusely to Ukai and Takeda, waiting impatiently, they gather their things and make their way out.  
  
Daichi is fine, as it turns out, and pretty proud of Ennoshita, who disappears for a few minutes—probably to pee, Hinata guesses.  
  
They make their way to the stands of the other court to watch Date Tech and Aobajousai. When Ennoshita arrives a few minutes later, Hinata is distracted watching those on the court relax and stretch for the second set that he’d forgotten about Yotsuya-senpai, but Nishinoya hasn’t.  
  
“Hey, hey, Chikara. What was that Yotsuya-senpai about?”  
  
Hinata glances away from the court towards Ennoshita, then back towards the court, trying to listen and watch. His eyes drift from Aone talking to his coach—or rather, his coach talking to him—and towards Aobajousai, where Oikawa is smiling with Iwaizumi. His hair sticks to his face with sweat, and he’s patting his face dry with a towel.  
  
“Oh, well...I think he went to my middle school. There was a rumor about him—he was more like a legend than anything. Nobody ever saw him, but people said if you went to the roof and offered him a horror story, he would fix your problems for you.”  
  
“What, a horror story? That’s creepy.”  
  
It _is_ pretty creepy, Hinata thinks, remembering the disturbingly pleased laughter the ghost—Yotsuya—had let out when he screamed. Oikawaa is wiping Iwaizumi’s face for him, now, even as Iwaizumi tries to shove his hand away in protest. Hinata had forgotten how thick Iwaizumi’s arms look, even from this distance.  
  
“I know, right? Well, the rumor was already there when I was a first year, so I don’t know how long he was around for...but you remember that incident a few years back? We would have been second years in middle school. It was around the time that girl was murdered.”  
  
“Oh, the mass hysteria in your schools assembly?” Narita, not Nishinoya, asks. Hinata hadn’t heard anything about _that_.   
  
“Yeah. We saw him then, just for a few minutes—the lights went out after he stepped onto the podium, but he gave this really strange speech. His voice had a way of sinking into you, like he had a direct hotlink to your brain or something. Everyone calmed down when he did it. He was gone around when the lights came back, though.”  
  
“That’s when that girls head was found in the gym, right? Weren’t people saying it was that Yotsuya guy for a while?” Kinoshita asks, sounding uncomfortable.  
  
“Ah, yeah...but it wasn’t him. It was the principal. There was a lot of questioning involved after he was caught, and Nakashima was pretty adamant about it all, even though that Yotsuya seemed to disappear again after the case. There were lots of rumors she was involved with him in some way, so that’s why I figured that guy might be him.”  
  
“Huh,” Hinata says, briefly glancing away from the game. “I heard about that case, but I didn’t know you went to that school, senpai. That must’ve been scary.”  
  
Ennoshita runs a hand through his hair, smiling awkwardly.  
  
“I guess. It all felt kind of—I mean, it was scary, but a lot of strange things happened at that school. I didn’t realize how strange until I came to Karasuno and started to remember what a normal school is like. But, um, despite everything that happened, it seems like Yotsuya-senpai wasn’t a bad guy. He seemed to solve a lot of problems around the school.”  
  
“Really? Even with the horror stuff…?” Narita asks, leaning in from where he sits behind Ennoshita.  
  
“Yeah. I mean, I was in Nakashima’s class in our third year, and she was pretty...I mean, she was sort of odd, but she was a nice girl. I asked her about it once. She said ‘Yotsuya-senpai is unfortunately very real, but even though his methods scare people, the end results are always good.’” Ennoshita pauses, then coughs.  
  
“Ah, she also said, ‘but don’t tell anyone’. I think she only talked about him so seriously with me is because I never really paid attention to that stuff and I wouldn’t talk about him with others. She usually kept up the ‘he’s real, but he’s not a person’ thing.”  
  
“He sure seemed like a ghost to me,” Hinata grumbles, remembering with embarrassment how scared he had been when Yotsuya first stepped out of the bathroom stall.  
  
Ennoshita laughs.  
  
“Right? I thought he was, when he showed up that day.”  
  
“Alright, alright. Enough of this Yotsuya-senpai—second set is starting,” Ukai says, appearing at the edge of the seats.  
  
“Here, we got food for everyone. Bananas, protein bars, water. Time to recharge,” Takeda adds, handing the bag to Sugawara to distribute among them.  
  
Hinata’s focus returns to the court. The score keepers flip the sign to signify the set number and Hinata leans forward in his seat, tearing open the protein bar Sugawara hands him with eagerness.  
  
Aone looks like he’s in good form today. Oikawa, too, though he _always_ seems to be in good form.  
  
Whoever wins is who they’ll face next. Yotsuya-senpai fades from Hinata’s mind for the time being as he focuses on the start of the set.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: i love coffee. my username is glueskin.


End file.
